QCDN May Newsletter

[Sculli]

Most of you got this just now by email (except for those who opted out, and some 200-ish users who are active but who's email bounces nonetheless), still here it is;

QCDN News
from QuetzalCoatl Daily News
Volume 2006, Issue No. 4
May 8, 2006
** QCDN removed Flameboard
** QCDN Birthday Celebration Winner!
** April Contest Winners
** May Contest Announcements!
** QCDN Server Move Complete
** Mods Wanted!
** Style Update III
** Future Plans - Gallery
** How to Unsubscribe
** QCDN Community Standards

QCDN REMOVED THE FLAMEBOARD
Nope, it's not a belated April Fools thing. The Flameboard has indeed been re-
moved from QCDN. New QCDN Community Standards have been established to promote
a climate of mutual respect between members.
Please review the QCDN Community Standards at the end of this mailing.
With the removal of the Flameboard two new forums have been opened:
End-Game Discussion and Neighborhood Watch. The purpose of the End-Game Dis-
cussion is to keep end-game topics out of General Discussion where they could
easily be pushed to the second or third page quickly and thus be lost in
practical terms. The purpose of the Neighborhood Watch is to provide a forum
where players can let other players know whom to watch out for in a factual
manner. The Neighborhood Watch is not a replacement for the old Flameboard.
There is a number of people who have expressed interest in saving quality con-
tent from the old Flameboard. If you would like to be part of this group, and
go through old FB post to look for things worth saving, please send me a PM.

QCDN BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION WINNER!
Kyr won the iPod in the QCDN 2nd Birthday Celebration contest.
Of course that happened way too early for my taste, but hey, that's how things
go sometimes. Congratulations Kyr, and thanks for playing to everyone else.

APRIL CONTEST WINNERS
DeviFoxx won the Member of the Month contest for being the most awesome Fan
Festival reporter, and Swishiee won the Screenshot Contest.
DeviFoxx received a $25 Amazon Gift Certificate, while Swishiee received a $15
Amazon Gift Certificate. Congratulations to both!

MAY CONTEST ANNOUNCEMENTS!
The turn-out in for the past contests was consistently low, even when more
aggressive advertising was used (i.e. posting about the contests to the FB).
Between that and my current dificulties to monetize the contest, I have decided
to not actually hold any contests this month. This decision is current as of
today, but it may change tomorrow. If you have any ideas whom to approach for
contest sponsorship, please let me know. Also, if you would be willing and
able to contribute to a in-game purse to be used as contest prize, PM me.
I always considered the contest fun, even though they do take some work on my
part, but if the interest is consistently low, they they are simply not worth
the effort at some point.
I realize that a $25 prize isn't exactly an amount to get excited over, and I
would certainly like to give out games or consoles or whatever, but the reality
such as it is doesn't allow for that to happen. The only way to put up more
meaningful contest prizes is to find contest sponsors. That is something that
is currently beyond my ability as I currently just don't have the time for it.

QCDN SERVER MOVE COMPLETE
On April 30th I think it was that QCDN moved from Liquidweb's Virtual Private
Server I (256MB guaranteed RAM) to Virtual Private Server II (512MB guaranteed
RAM). The move went smoothly, though the 7 hour downtime was somewhat longer
than I had expected. The hosting cost went from $60 to $100 monthly as a re-
sult of the move, but out-of-memory errors and subsequent server crashes are
now a thing of the past.

MODS WANTED!
With the new QCDN Community Standards comes the need to add more moderators to
several QCDN forums. I plan to have a total of 3 to 4 moderators per forum.
If you would be interested in moderating, please contact me via PM and state
which forum you would like to mod. I will then send you the moderator standard
write-up, and we can take it from there. Please realize that I do expect to
receive many more applicants than there are open positions, and that you may
thus not be offered a mod position this time around. In either case I would
like to thank you in advance for your willingness to contribute your time to
this community.

STYLE UPDATE III
Well, the designer has promised me to have the new styles online by May 10th,
that's all I know. As of today the design is not uploaded to the test board
yet, so I have no idea whether the May 10th deadline is real. I am beginning
to think I should just ask for a refund of the $125 already paid and see
whether I can possibly find someone else to create a FFXI themed vBulletin
style.

FUTURE PLANS - GALLERY
I am planning to add the Photopost vB Gallery script to QCDN, though I am a
little confused at this point. vB Gallery used to be a free script made by the
same people who code vBAdvanced. They seem to have sold it to the Photopost
people. Photopost Gallery is a commercial product, though there was talk that
the former vB Gallery will be supported as free plugin to vBulletin. Anyway, I
will try to sort this out sometime this month and see whether I can add the
gallery script to QCDN so that you can upload your screenshots and fan art to
QCDN. The benefit is that your images will be hosted on premium bandwidth and
without a quota.

HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE
If you indeed wish to unsubscribe from this monthly newsletter, then please
send an email to editor [AT] qcdn [DOT] org with 'remove' in the subject line or the
message body. Right now I will have to manually remove you from the list,
ultimately there will be an option in the User Control Panel that will allow
you to unsubscribe.

If you unsubscribe you will not receive further newsletters until the UserCP
option is implemented, at which time you may receive another newsletter until
you change your UserCP preferences. I will try my best to make sure those who
unsubscribe will not receive a newsletter when the UserCP option goes live, but
I unfortunately can not guarantee that this will be the case as there may be
technical difficulties in implementing existing unsubscribed users.

QCDN COMMUNITY STANDARDS
http://www.qcdn.org/showthread.php?t=26908
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